Search interest in foodservice franchises falls in St Petersburg

Search interest in café, coffee shop and bakery franchises has fallen in St Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad region. According to research by ready-to-eat food retailer Uppetit, published on Retail.ru on 5 November 2026, searches for these formats declined by roughly a quarter. Interest in grocery shop franchises, meanwhile, remained unchanged. For the franchising sector, the findings offer an indication of how prospective franchisees’ attention is shifting between business formats.

Which formats attracted fewer searches?

Uppetit’s analysts examined search interest in food-related franchises across ten categories in St Petersburg and the Leningrad region. They compared October 2025 to September 2026 with the equivalent period a year earlier. The findings therefore reflect a comparison between two full-year periods, rather than a fluctuation in interest in a single month.

The retailer estimates that overall interest in franchises in the region fell by 20%. Searches for “buy a franchise” dropped more sharply, by 43%. Trends varied across the categories studied:

• café franchise searches fell by 28%;
• bakery and coffee shop franchises each saw a 27% decline;
• restaurant franchises fell by 25%;
• sushi franchises fell by 43%;
• shawarma franchises fell by 31%.

Against this backdrop, grocery shop franchises maintained their previous level of search interest. Searches for canteen-style restaurant franchises fell by 8% — a smaller decline than for the foodservice formats listed above. This does not indicate growing demand for canteens: they stand out in the study specifically because searches declined more moderately.

These differences matter when interpreting the results. The overall trend does not describe every individual category: the average decline encompasses both much steeper falls and one format where interest was unchanged.

How Uppetit explains the shift in interest

Uppetit links prospective investors’ choices primarily to consumer behaviour rather than the size of the initial investment. To support this interpretation, the researchers point to declining interest in formats they classify as low-cost: sushi and shawarma franchises lost a larger share of searches than cafés or restaurants.

The publication also cites consumer demand figures. According to estimates from Evotor, cafés, coffee shops and bakeries recorded 6–10% fewer transactions in the first half of 2026. At the same time, NTech reports that ready-to-eat food sales volumes in Russia rose by 15% over the same six-month period.

A separate factor is the cost of staffing an in-house kitchen. According to the cited estimate from Mega-Personal, salaries for cooks with one to three years’ experience rose by 55% over the year. When assessing franchise economics, this adds staffing costs to the question of customer traffic.

Uppetit’s explanation is that budget-conscious consumers visit cafés less often but continue to buy lunches and dinners, including ready-to-eat meals on their way to work or close to home. The retailer believes investors are following consumers in taking a closer look at these formats.

However, this remains the interpretation of a company operating in the ready-to-eat food segment. Nationwide sales trends for ready-to-eat food and regional search data cannot be treated as direct evidence that particular entrepreneurs are switching from one franchise format to another.

Brand names mattered more than categories

Another finding concerns how people search: searches for food-related franchises by chain name were more than twice as common as searches by type of outlet. In other words, users searched for specific brands more often than for general business categories.

For franchisors, this is a reason to assess interest in their own brand separately from interest in the wider format. A fall in searches for coffee shop franchises does not automatically reveal how attention to each chain has changed. Similarly, stable interest in grocery shops does not mean every brand in that category achieved the same result.

For prospective franchisees, a recognisable name is no substitute for scrutinising the offer. Search interest alone says nothing about an outlet’s profitability, contract terms or the extent of support provided. The study describes users’ attention, not the quality of individual franchises.

What the findings mean for the sector

The main limitation of these data is what they measure. Search queries are not the same as signed agreements, outlet openings or investment volumes. A 28% decline in interest in café franchises should not be reported as a fall of the same size in sales of those franchises.

The geographical scope also matters: the study covers St Petersburg and the Leningrad region. Applying these percentages to the Russian franchising sector as a whole would be inappropriate without additional data. The nationwide ready-to-eat food sales figures provide context, but do not broaden the geographical scope of the search-interest study itself.

Practical takeaway: prospective franchisees should use search trends as a prompt to investigate their chosen format more closely, not as a ready-made investment decision. Before choosing a chain, it is worth comparing its transaction figures, staffing costs and existing outlets’ performance with the conditions at the specific location under consideration.